Calendar

Teachings on the

SIX BARDOS

with Dharmacarya Ken Holmes

Director of Studies at Kagyu Samye Ling

Ken's life is spent teaching dharma and meditation in Samye Dzongs in Europe and Africa, as well as occasionally interpreting for visiting Tibetan lamas. He was a founder member of the Scottish Inter-Faith Council and has worked with the British Cabinet Office and the European Community on training programmes. In 2002, he represented Buddhism at meetings in Brussels to discuss religious representation in the new European constitution.

Ken's travels through the Middle East and Afghanistan took him to India and on to Kagyu Samye

Ling in Scotland, which has been his base for the past 45 years. His life has been devoted to making Tibetan Buddhist meditation and philosophy available to the Western world and to assisting the late Akong Rinpoche. With his wife Katia, he has co-translated some of the main Kagyu teaching texts into English, as well as much of the liturgy used in daily practice. Ken’s main dharma teachers included the 16th Karmapa, the Tai Situpa, Gyaltsab Rinpoche, Akong Rinpoche, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche.

The "Six Bardos" or "Six Transitions" is a key Vajrayana topic—a study of consciousness explaining the six modes of awareness possible for the mind: three during this life (waking state, sleep and deep meditation) and three at death and between lives.